Toxocara canis

Beginning from 1975, the patients with eosinophilia of unclear aetiology have been serologically tested for toxocariosis in Lithuania (Baiorinene and Ramanauskaite 1979). For the first

3 years, 1524 patients were studied, of whom 86 were diagnosed for toxocariosis. The infection has been attributed to T. canis, since up to 13% of dogs are infected in Lithuania. Between 1992 and 1996, 7 720 patients have been tested for the infection by means of ELISA and 3400 tests gave positive results. Concerning Estonia and Latvia, no toxocariosis studies in humans have been carried out to our best knowledge.